Dr. David Katz: Preventive Medicine: Understanding prejudice

Published
12:30 am EDT, Monday, July 18, 2016

Like you, I have seen a lot of commentary about the shootings of both black men and, then, police, in egregiously misguided retaliation — but thus far, nothing that has asked, and answered: Why are human beings prone to this kind of violence in the first place?

And if the answer to that is obvious — bias, fear and hatred — then it merely begs a second question: Why are human beings prone to prejudice and that toxic brew?

I believe the answer is clear, and derives from sociology, anthropology and, ultimately, biology. I believe the answer is survival. I believe the answer is: That’s why we’re here.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning masterwork, “Guns, Germs, and Steel,” Jared Diamond describes how white Europeans achieved a degree of dominion over black Africans and other indigenous populations around the world. The story is a profound indictment of any kind of manifest destiny. Quite the contrary, it invites one to think in terms of trivialities, like those of the children’s game Rock, Paper, Scissors.

If, for instance, a tribe of paper people were to encounter a tribe of rock people, they would overcome them — and perhaps derive the impression that they were, accordingly, superior. On the other hand, if that same tribe of paper happened to encounter a tribe of scissors, they, in turn, would be overcome. And yet, circuitously — the tribe of rock is natively disposed to overcome the tribe of scissors.

There is, in other words, nothing at all hierarchical in these contests. There is nothing vaguely related to superiority. The outcome is a matter of context and capricious circumstance. All human interaction is much the same. There is no superiority. There are differing circumstances that accord one group or the other the upper hand. Superiority is an illusion, born of little more than serendipity.

But what a portentous illusion it proves to be. All of human history has soaked in the blood, sweat and tears of it. All of human history is a pockmarked expanse of subjugation by those wielding the upper hand, of all others, propagating just such consequences.

It calls us to a common inquiry. Are we, beneath our civilized veneer, willing to be so subjugated by the indiscriminate discriminations of brute biology? For that, at bedrock, beneath layers of sediment and ages of shadow, is just where we find ourselves.

Across every version of us and them — cops and citizens; black and white; Catholic and Protestant; Israeli and Palestinian; Sunni and Shia — we are biologically conjoined. We are members of a single species and thus a single extended family. There is no them; there has only, ever, been us.

Paradoxically, this common human experience is conjoined in the basic biology of bias that blinds us to these family ties. Survival in a natural world propagates xenophobia because, all but inevitably, any group of other animals is apt to want what we have.

As a result, we are all programmed to look for differences and be suspicious of them. We are programmed to circle our wagons since long before the invention of the wheel, and define the space within as us, the space without as … them. Unless we acknowledge this tendency, we remain vulnerable to it. It is by knowing that we look for differences, that they evoke our primitive anxiety, that we acquire the capacity to overcome the inclination.

When we speak about police profiling, it is an objectionable thing, and rightly so. But we Homo sapiens are all profilers. We survive, and have always survived, by looking for patterns in the world around us.

To some extent it is our perception of patterns that invites anticipation. We expect things to be as they have been before. That is the value of patterns; but it is also the peril. Because closely allied to patterns, and the perception of them, is the risk of prejudice. Anticipation of what may happen, and prejudicial reaction to it before it ever does happen, are separated by a sliver.

President Barack Obama said in Dallas of those who sow hatred and division that they will not drive “us” apart. That is the crucial aspiration, but it is contingent. It is contingent on the recognition that we are, indeed, just us — and not, already, us and them.

The simple fact is that, by its very character, “us” cannot be driven apart, for “us” is a state of unity. We have an informed decision to make. We have long been both “us” and “them.” Are we now able, willing\ and ready to be just “us”?

We are part of a 21st-century culture that has put footprints on the moon and placed a ship in orbit around Jupiter. And yet, more of our population believes in angels than evolution. Ironically, our best destiny has something to do with both. For the better angels of our nature to prevail, we must move past the choices made for us long ago by nature. We must choose to decide for ourselves. We must understand to overcome. We must choose to evolve.

Dr. David L. Katz, www.davidkatzmd.com, is author of “Disease Proof”; founder of the True Health Initiative.